As President Trump visits China, the contrast between the president — at war with the national media, the corporate establishment, almost all of academia and even his own party — and the sure-handed Xi Jinping seems almost unbearable. Xi has consolidated power to an extent not seen since Mao’s time, while directing a global expansion of Chinese power, notably in central and south Asia as well as Africa.

Xi’s power is all the greater for how subtly it is applied. There are no great propaganda posters on the streets of Beijing. Last week at Peking University’s “Global Forum,” few scholars openly challenged the country’s authoritarian system although limited open debate and discussion was permitted. China may be authoritarian, but not crudely oppressive like the former Soviet Union, North Korea or Cuba.

What China craves, not surprisingly given its turbulent 20th century, is “order,” both at home and in its expanding roster of vassal states. Their soft authoritarianism, at least if you are not an open dissident, is now promoted as the new global “role model” in the Chinese media. No matter how much Trump tries to talk tough about no longer being a “chump,” it’s likely he will be portrayed here and abroad as ceding the center of the world stage to Xi.

The New Role Model?

China’s ascendency appeals to many in America’s intellectual classes, and not only them, who historically have a soft spot for “enlightened” autocrats and overweening bureaucracies. In the progressive era, the lodestone was imperial Germany, in the 1930s for many the “future” was to be seen in the Soviet Union and even fascist Italy. In the 1980s, Japan emerged as the role model, followed in the late 1990s by a united Europe that seemed to many more humane and successful than the U.S.

In all cases, these role models ultimately failed to stay competitive with the United States. The Soviet Union is long gone and Mussolini, at best, is regarded as an almost comically bombastic figure. Both Japan and Europe have lagged the United States in innovation and are fading demographically.

To be sure, China may pose a greater challenge than any other in our history. It is poised to surpass the U.S. in terms of aggregate economic output; it enjoys a rapidly growing educated population, bustling cities and a strong sense of national unity. It also has seen more people lifted more quickly out of poverty than any regime in history and some suggest it is about to be the leader in technology as well.

The Limits of Autocracy

Unlike post-war Germany and Japan, China has prospered without adopting Western political models and values but in opposition to them. Its elite does its best to meld Maoist rhetoric, Confucian values and neo-classical economics into a uniquely pragmatic ideology that delivers both material progress and political stability. Yet this system faces many problems intrinsically more challenging than those ahead of us, even under our spate of weak leadership.

The most obvious problem lies in demographics. China is aging rapidly, and increasingly faces a shortage of cheap labor, the original source of its competitive advantage. The Chinese welfare system is ill-suited to this, and the policy of urban centralization exacerbates the low birthrate. Beijing and Shanghai, notes demographer Gavin Jones, have fertility rates under 1, well below the 2.1 replacement rate.

And despite its well promoted green image in the media and here in California, China’s environmental issues make ours pale in comparison. The country, despite its ostentatious embrace of the Paris accords, continues to be the largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world, 50 percent above the U.S., even as “obstructionist” America’s emission have fallen. Water poses a greater danger, with nearly two-thirds of Chinese cities, according to local researchers, facing severe shortages of drinking water.

But perhaps the biggest challenge stems from the very “meritocratic” autocracy, now increasingly repressive and militarized, that many westerners find so attractive. In the take-off phase directed central planning can work miracles, as we can see also in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany and, in some ways, the post-war Asian tigers, such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. All remained essentially authoritarian, albeit more open than China, one-party states until the close of the late 20th century.

As they have become more democratic and pluralist, all these countries have begun to adjust to the demands of their increasingly educated populations. In China, an affluent urban population is also becoming more restive about their living conditions than the former impoverished peasantry and working class. In China, democracy is off the agenda, so responding to popular, particularly dissident, opinion requires strict monitoring by the security services, notably those overseeing the internet, to maintain support for the regime.

To be sure, forcing conformity tends to be more “efficient” in maintaining political control and promoting economic growth during the “take off phase.” But authoritarian regimes enjoy a far less sterling record over the long run, as demonstrated by the Second World War, the Cold War and the relative decline of Japan.

Ultimately America’s edge, as the late journalist Sam Chi often noted, lies not in our ineffective politics, but a system that allows for internal regime change and, through the Constitution, limits on rule from above. All this may be lost in the fevered coverage of Trump, at best a second-rate autocrat, but pluralism remains the ultimate best guarantor of our ability to innovate and adjust in ways difficult, ultimately, for even the best run autocracies.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).

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